1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to optical techniques for characterizing semiconductor materials. More particularly, the present invention involves methods for determining parameters in non-classical semiconductor materials including, without limitation, silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrates, strained silicon-on-insulator (sSOI) substrates, silicon-germanium-on-insulator (GeOI) substrates, and strained silicon-germanium-on-insulator (sGeOI) substrates.
2. Description of Related Art
Current integrated circuit (IC) manufacturing processes employ bulk silicon substrates for the fabrication of semiconductor devices. During the manufacturing process, in-line metrology techniques such as spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE) and reflectometry can be used to determine the properties of the substrate. Using these techniques and certain characteristics of the silicon substrate, e.g., the optical properties of the substrate, parameters such as thickness and refractive index of the layers deposited on the silicon substrate can be determined. In most cases, the optical constants are parameterized in some form of an oscillator model.
With the introduction of non-classical substrates, including silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrates, strained silicon-on-insulator (sSOI) substrates, silicon-germanium-on-insulator (GeOI) substrates, and strained silicon-germanium-on-insulator (sGeOI) substrates and the like, traditional in-line metrology techniques are inadequate to accurately characterize the properties of these substrates. For example, SOI substrates that are less than 10 nanometers in thickness can include additional quantum mechanical properties than can affect the optical and electrical properties of the substrates. However, current SE techniques use classical oscillator based optical models and therefore may not account for these quantum mechanical corrections to the properties in the substrates. Thus, using current SE techniques to characterize SOI substrates will affect the accuracy of the measurement. Additionally, due to the multiple layers common in non-classical substrates, current techniques that simultaneously measure multiple parameters and may generate erroneous results due to correlation factors.
Any shortcoming mentioned above is not intended to be exhaustive, but rather is among many that tends to impair the effectiveness of previously known techniques for characterizing substrates; however, shortcomings mentioned here are sufficient to demonstrate that the methodologies appearing in the art have not been satisfactory and that a significant need exists for the techniques described and claimed in this disclosure.